I actually prefer to deploy mine behind, but on high ground. That’s often covered in trees and offers some protection. Aside from which, my skirmishers are incredibly stupid., and wait until they’re already being killed to run. :rolleyes:
I haven’t had much luck with the skirmish setting either. My last attempt to see if it could be useful ended up with bow cavalry getting caught by a foot charge on flat, open ground. Inexcusable.
Putting ranged units in front also loses some of your best firing time to repositioning, especially if you’ve got experienced units that can pull off a lot of volleys in a short time span. Like most other things, there’s no universally applicable rule of thumb, it all depends on the situation.
I don’t bother with skirmish mode, either. I still deploy my archers out front, but I just have my infantry charge forward through them when the enemy melee troops are about to close. Seems to work okay, but I won’t guarantee that it isn’t in fact a dumb move. I don’t know if I take any friendly fire doing that (everyone’s usually taking enemy fire at that point), but I figure it’s better than having my archers stop shooting to fall back. Plus, falling back might put them too far to keep shooting the enemy archers.
Speaking of cover, one thing I love to do is deploy spearmen in spearwall formation just inside a forest, with archers right behind them set to fire at will. If the enemy has cavalry, he is almost guaranteed to send them racing towards the bait and bam, smack right into the wall. Never fails.
How many different kinds of agents (as opponsed to military units) are there in this game?
I lost quite a bit of enthusiasm for TW after playing a lot of M2TW, because I got tired of shuffling spies, diplomats, princesses, merchants and assassins around (did I forget anything?). The merchants were the worst offender–they were useless unless you coordinated them together with a spy and an assassin, and you really had to go check each one individually on the map every turn, which got really tedious.
Is it like this in S2TW?
No, not really. There are 3 agent types that I can think of, and some of them I hardly ever use. There are ninja assassins (which I actually use as scouts), there are monks which I hardly ever use (I generally just buy one if there is a mission that asks you too) which you can use to convert enemy characters or increase the moral of your army or a province, and metsuke, which are like policemen and can be used to capture or kill enemy agents (I actually use these guys the most). I suppose if you want to consider ships to be agents there are trade ships which you can send out to one of the trade hotspots, but I generally don’t bother with those either, since inevitably someone will come along and attack them unless you have enough money to build an offensive fleet…and I’d rather spend my money on another field army than a bunch of ships in this game.
You don’t really have to move the agents around constantly unless you enjoy sending your ninjas out to assassinate enemy agents or generals, or disrupting enemy army movements, destroying enemy buildings or sneaking into enemy cities to scout. Same with the other guys…I usually have a ninja in each of my army stacks, with a metsuke either in the stack or in the province just behind my army advance (to me they are more effective at taking out enemy agents than the ninja is)…and I don’t bother with monks.
-XT
Monks have their uses. Converting Christian provinces on Kyushu. “Converting” enemy agents. Boosting province happiness. Lending bonuses to your army on the march.
But my favorite application is inspiring rebellion. The AI will mass the bulk of its troops at a front, tending to leave light garrisons in its rear, making them vulnerable to being incited. This is particularly handy for slowly subverting allies without breaking the alliance and getting that shitty reputation. Incite rebellion > rebel army takes provincial capital in a turn or two if the AI doesn’t react quickly enough > move in with your patiently waiting stack and crush “rebellion”, adding a new province without breaking alliance.
Using agents against them does annoy allied AIs, but they value alliances + marriages more, so it usually won’t irreparably break relations unless something else is bothering them.
Agents are hugely powerful in Shogun 2 and each has multiple roles. All of them can be used as advance scouts, as they all move independently and have large vision range, but the ninja get you the most information on enemy army composition.
Ninja can damage buildings, assassinate generals or agents, or prevent an army from moving for one turn by sabotaging its supply line. When attached to a friendly army or settlement, they increase map vision radius and movement speed, and protect against enemy monk actions. Ninja are also the only agent that are hidden from the enemy until detected.
Metsuke can apprehend agents and bribe enemy armies or settlements. When attached to a friendly settlement, they control unhappiness, increase tax income (a LOT), and protect against enemy ninja actions. Attached to an army, they also increase loyalty, protecting against bribery as well as ninja.
Buddhist Monks & Christian Missionaries convert the populace of the province they’re in at all times and can take actions to decrease the morale of an enemy army, cause an agent to doubt their path in life, or incite a revolt in a province. Attached to a friendly army, they increase morale and protect against bribery, and to a settlement, they increase happiness if at least half the population is of their religion. Missionaries are a bit more offensively oriented than monks.
Each can be game-changing. Keeping an army from moving, bribing incoming reinforcements, or causing a revolt in undefended territories can have a huge effect. They tend to be economically advantageous, too, since they cost nothing but an initial outlay, compared to the high continuing upkeep costs of military units, allowing you to more efficiently convert money into advantage. Heck, a skilled metsuke can bribe an enemy army for less than it would cost to produce them yourself.
There’s a fourth agent, the geisha, who is limited to just assassination, but she’s only available at the very end of the ninja tech chain (so usually won’t show up at all) and isn’t functionally different from ninja in use.
I’ve played a few campaigns on very hard, winning with the Shimazu and Date and abandoning campaigns with Oda and Chosokabe around Realm Divide when it became obvious there was no realistic way the AI clans could prevent a steamrolling victory. I’ve enjoyed the game so far, but IMO there are some really puzzling design decisions that will probably prevent me from playing it much further.
The campaign AI, for instance, is way too aggressive. They tend to attack at the first oppurtunity with their entire strength, leaving even cities within marching distance of an enemy army completely ungarisoned. Early-game wars tend to turn into a repetitive grind of ‘defeat sieging army, counterattack lightly-or-completely undefended enemy city, rinse-and-repeat’. A prime example is the Oda clan, who starts out at war with two clans and a rebel army, all within marching distance of their only city. In the hands of a human player that knows what they are doing, the Oda clan bonus makes them probably the easiest faction in the game. Under AI control they are almost always annihilated on the first turn of the game.
The strength of the ashigaru units are an issue as well. Because of the cost/benefit ratio of all-ashigaru armies, it is never an optimal move to recruit samurai units, and, by extension, never optimal to build anything other than a market and sake den in your castle slots. This makes battles pretty repetitive, as the best mid-to-late game strategy is to simply field multiple stacks of mixed yari and bow ashigaru and outnumber the enemy two or three to one.
And the bushido tech tree and special unit-bonus province building exacerbate the last issue. They give linear bonuses, which benefit ashigaru more than samurai. Which means that samurai, which start the game at a cost/benefit disadvantage to ashigaru, only get worse as time goes on. Add in additional linear, ashigaru-only bonuses from the General’s skill tree, and the gamebreaking ‘Stand and Fight!’ skill, and there is absolutely no reason to recruit a samurai unit, ever (outside of RP).
When it’s all said and done, I’ve had a bit of fun with the game, but unless the mod scene manages to miracle up with something pretty radical I’ll probably go back to Medieval II.
Yep. Priests.
I’d rather deal with all of those if I meant I didn’t have to worry about a damn inquisitor destroying my family line.
Take a look at the Darthmod that’s come out.
The only thing that I think favors huge ashigaru armies is the autoresolve logic. In field combat, samurai are more than effective against ashigaru in their economic ratios, especially since it becomes difficult simply to bring large ashigaru numbers to bear effectively. They get slaughtered by ranged fire, and relying on larger numbers couples poorly with their lower morale, as it means that once you’re beginning to get to break even, your ashigaru are already wavering due to casualties, unless there’s a lot of morale bonuses backing them up. Siege battles make it even worse - samurai mow through almost limitless numbers of ashigaru when the edge of contact is forced down to a trickle.
But then along comes the autoresolve, and its rather odd views towards numerical superiority above all else. If you have the larger force, autoresolve will not only hand you a win, but in ridiculously optimistic margins. Two ashigaru stacks vs one samurai stack defending a fortress will be a bloodbath and likely defeat for the attackers if you fight it out, but autoresolve will consider it a huge victory with maybe 10% of the attacking force lost. This also results in the computer making some very poor combat choices, like attacking when it should retreat, because it estimates a victory using the same logic…that has little to no alignment with what actually happens if you fight it out on the battlefield.
The worst example was when I was taking Kyoto in my first campaign. The shogun had only one army, about half high-ranking bow samurai, then a couple katana cavalry, and eight katana hero units. Over two or three years, I put three samurai armies at that thing, trying to whittle it down, and they simply chewed me up even in open terrain combat. It was ridiculous, I could barely kill the katana heroes at all while they were cleaving through anything in their path. But then I said to heck with it and moved in a stack and a half of yari ashigaru and, ta-da, autoresolve gave me a “heroic victory” despite it being a siege on the citadel. Comical. They’d have been lucky to even make it up the first wall in tactical mode.
Unfortunately autoresolve is far from the only thing to favor ashigaru. A more important factor is the experience system and the tech tree. If you want an explanation, just take a look at what happens when you recruit a katana samurai. Look at the oppurtunity cost. In terms of initial cost + upkeep, the cost is 2 yari ashigaru (+ a 2k koku building and an extra turn recruiting). So you get a 12 attack, 4 defense unit (16 pips) instead of two 4 attack, 2 defense units (12 pips).
Now add a +1 bonus to attack/defense (which you can get from blacksmith/forge type province building, general, exp, tech tree or religious inspiration) and then you have a 13 attack, 5 defense unit (18 pips) instead of two 5 attack, 3 defense units (16 pips). With a single upgrade applied, the gap between samurai and equal cost number of ashigaru closes significantly even tho the samurai got the same bonus as the ashigaru. And that is the problem. Whatever bonus you create for the samurai will be doubly effective if applied to an equivalent cost in ashigaru instead.
Think about all the bonuses in the game. +1 to all stats from general’s command stars, experience levels, attack/defence bonus from fully upgraded forges. +3 passive from the Stand and Fight ability. It would be pretty easy to have +7 to stats fairly early in the game, making your katana samurai 19 attack, 11 defense (30 pips) and your two units of ashigaru 11 attack and 10 defense (42 pips). And so at this point recruiting a samurai not only takes twice as long, but results in a loss of 12 stat pips if you consider only attack and defense.
So if you recruit ashigaru and outnumber an enemy samurai army 2 to 1, you just have to know how to use positioning of you relief army to get the benefit of all 40 units. If the enemy army is all samurai, they will do heavy damage to your first army, maybe even destroy it (but you shouldn’t let that happen – once bonuses start stacking I very often will defeat a mostly samurai army with only ashigaru), but if you position the relief army correctly they will then have to fight a second full army with exhaustion penalty and you will destroy them with very few casualties.
Then when you replace the first army (cause any unit that takes more than a couple turns to replenish is more cost effective to disband and replace) you can replace what you lost for half the cost in half the time as it would take your enemy.
If you are a decent player on the RTS phase and follow the ashigaru only strategy, you will have more units, take over more territory, have more money coming in than if you try to build samurai armies, guaranteed.
… That’s how you’re figuring this, just adding it up and assuming that equal total stats amounts to equal combat capability? How do you reconcile that with the results that one unit of katana samurai will typically defeat three units of yari ashigaru at the same time? The attack and defense stats determine the outcome of the individual 1v1 battles that take place when units fight, and it’s not linear. You’re not throwing 12 attack at them, you’re throwing a lot of guys with 4 attack at them who each lose their duels over and over again before one gets lucky. That’s why the very reason why the general and hero units are so potent despite their tiny unit sizes: it’s vastly more difficult to actually kill any of them.
For the record, you’re also neglecting the armor, charge and morale bonuses that samurai have, and how their force concentration means Inspire is more effective (huge in the early game), in addition to their own special abilities they might have. Rapid Advance, Banzai and (especially) Rapid Volley all swing things even more in their favor at the crucial beginning of battle.
In campaign terms it’s in their favor, too. Sure, the flat tech boosts add a rank to everybody, but the building-granted ranks come from castle upgrades for ashigaru and dojo upgrades for samurai. Castles are more expensive, particularly when their food consumption is taken into account. Samurai gain and retain experience better due to higher individual kills and fewer losses taken, and they make better use of generals’ attributes (increased move, reduced upkeep, etc) because they condense more capability into fewer stacks.
Also, you do know that the second dojo upgrade drops samurai recruit times to 1 turn, right? You keep mentioning that as a downside, yet money to force conversion rate is strongly in favor of samurai any time beyond the very early game. You can compensate for that by recruiting ashigaru in multiple provinces at once, but that makes them take longer to assemble and also means you’re getting less coverage from province specializations.
Don’t get me wrong, ashigaru are useful far beyond usual expectations in a Total War game, but it’s despite of their combat capability, not because of it. They’re effective enough in battle to make their ready availability and low cost useful, especially when the autoresolve-gaming is counted in, but saying they stand up pound for pound to the high quality troops is exaggerating rather much.
I did like Shogun 2 the first few times, but it doesn’t seem to have the longevity that Medieval 2 and Rome had for me. The factions seem very similar, and there’s less unit variety.
I’ve recently started playing Medieval 2 with the Stainless Steel mod. There’s more factions, a bigger map, a lot of new units, more historical events, titles from each province you can grant to generals, and new features too. It really reignited my personal interest in Medieval 2. You need the kingdoms expansion for it, though.
You can turn off the new recruiting system, and stick with the regular Medieval 2 one if you want. The same is true of the new AI, which I’ve heard can lead to some slowness on older computers. I prefer the late era campaign (1200 onwards) personally, as factions start with a better variety of units already available from the start. The early era campaigns tend to be spear militia, levy archers and light cavalry heavy for a fairly long time.
I think the map is an issue here, too. The shape of Japan really limits the number of tactical options you can take. Most campaigns, you pretty much end up starting at one end of the island, and marching straight across to the other side. In the games set in Europe, you have a lot of different options, and starting in France leads to a pretty radically different game than starting in Egypt. In Shogun 2, the only major difference between starting as the Shimazu or the Date is whether you spend most of the game sending your troops to the left, or sending them to the right.
Similar to the limitations that were in the original Shogun. You can use choke points to wall off whole sections of the island, and your strategic options when you are on the offensive are pretty limited, even if you bother building a large fleet to transport your armies behind the lines. In the end, I generally just march, since consolidating my captures takes time in any case, as does refilling the ranks from the losses.
I guess I don’t optimize to the nth degree, as I usually build ashigara armies early on, but gradually switch over to all samurai armies in the later part of the game, using the older and (to me) weaker armies as backup and to help consolidate my captured provinces while the main army pushes on. Whenever I put an all ashigara force in the field, my losses always seem much higher (I don’t use auto resolve except when I’m taking a town that is lightly defended and not worth bothering with a full on fight for) than when I fight it out using samurai or monk troops.
-XT
How are you finding that one unit of katana samurai defeats three units of yari ashigaru? I ask because this is not my experience even in battles on the very hard and legendary difficulty levels. I will say that katana samurai are the most difficult of the samurai to deal with (which is only natural considering you’ve picked an anti-spear unit for the comparison instead of the more natural comparison vs yari samurai or naginatas), but against a human player they have trouble with a 2:1 advantage, let alone 3:1. If one yari unit accepts the charge in spearwall formation and the others flank for the attack from behind bonus, the katana samurai will be defeated very soundly.
I did neglect all of the other stats, because I was working from memory and not sure what the values were. But armor benefits the ashigaru disproportionately well just as in the other stats. Morale was ignored because it’s simply not important. If you play the ashigaru strategy, your ashigaru will have massive morale bonuses from the tech tree, from monk inspiration and the fact that before 5 years have passed you should have multiple 3, 4, maybe even some 5 star generals ability to lead your battles. They all provide extra morale and have the rally ability, stand and fight, and the ashigaru leader bonus if they are that advanced. Charge bonus, yes, it’s devastating if it goes off, but you should not let that happen. Move your units, intercept with a neighboring unit… since you mention special abilities, make them charge into spearwall formation, which is probably the best special unit ability in the game. Other than stand and fight.
Experience retention should not be a concern. The way this game is set up, you get your most experienced units by training them new, not by having them survive multiple battles. There is also a point, I think it’s around three turns, where if a unit does not replenish itself in that time it is more cost effective to disband it and train a new one, who, due to castle upgrades and tech bonus, will likely be as experienced or more experienced than your actual veteran units.
I’m not at home and don’t have the game handy, so help me out with which bushido tech is associated with the second level dojos . It’s bow/spear/sword masteries, right? A tier-5 tech? How long does it take to get there? On top of which you must build the building. By the time you research the tech you can have the game practically won with ashigaru. Part of what makes the strategy overpowered is that it’s not just that you can recruit ashigaru in multiple provinces, you can recruit them anywhere, regardless of infrastructure. The more provinces you take, the more ashigaru you recruit, it’s a real snowball effect. And you should average a city capture about every other turn. A competent player that knows what they are doing, using only ashigaru, can easily force realm divide within 10 years and win the game in 15.
It’s not autoresolve that makes ashigaru useful. Autoresolving is a timesaver, nothing more. It’s actually a handicap, since pretty much any human player should outperform autoresolve the majority of the time.
I feel much the same way, especially on the variety end. I used to love using Venetia and abandoning Venice and the other European holdings to go on a Crusade to Jerusalem or Antioch. Eventually I would garrison my holdings with the Venetian hammer infantry, and when the Turks or Egyptians would come to get the city back, I’d line the infantry up to defend the breaches they’d make in the wall and yell ‘HAMMER TIME!’ while they tried to break through
Thinking about it, it feels like Medieval had like 250 different units. Just thinking about some of the games I played, even among the European Catholic factions, they would often rely on completely different types of infantry from one another, and require faction unique strategies to play effectively. The venetians had the hammer infantry, the Danes had the Obudshaer and the rest of the heavy axe infantry, the Scots had Pikes, the English Billhooks, the French Voulges, the Spaniards javelin skirmishers… I’d love to go back and play it again, but for some reason my computer runs the tacticals at about 3x speed, so playing a battle is like trying to give orders to the keystone cops
i agree that stainless steel is a great mod, btw. Broken Crescent is probably the only other mod I used nearly as much.